to be.

Do you remember that time when everything was perfect?  For a moment life was exactly how you pictured it and you took a deep breath and tried to capture it in your heart and mind forever?

Then it faded.

As all perfection does.  In time, in memory, in picture, in hope, in dreams, in the onward stamping of life that pushes and pulls.

Like a kaleidoscope ever changing and forming a different picture, a readjustment of shape.

I have found that my life is comprised of the same basic pieces, it merely comes down to how they are being reflected that shows me the beauty, the goodness in each moment.

Some, I miss for days or years and it is only in the removal of time and emotion that I can look back and see any worth in them.  That I can say remember that moment.  Remember even in that really hard time in our life that beautiful day we walked around the lake, we carried our new born, and the sun cascaded through the golden leaves of fall and we breathed the heady scent of hope.  In that moment, we were a family, we were perfectly happy.  We weren't caught up in how lonely we were, how desperately we longed for family, how tired we felt, how inadequate, how lost in the constant and complete changes our lives had taken in that short year.  We just stopped and felt the whisps of time seal a memory.  It was only ours.

Things in my life have changed.  Things that I never ever thought could change, have altered.  I have lost and I have ached and I have watched time rip and grip through this season.  I have shaken like a tree in storm and when I should have breathed deep, have had all the air taken from me.

I never thought I'd say I can make it through, but I can.

But, I'm not the stronger for it.  I was probably more amazing a long time ago.

Now I merely brace for the wind, feel the sand clenching down as the waves roar around.  And I know that I am steady in the midst.  I know that I am okay.

Maybe that was the lesson needing to be learned.  I can lose, and I can ache, I can miss, and I can hope, but in the middle of all of this, when the pieces of my kaleidoscope smash and mix around and all shape and beauty are distorted in the shaking, this is a moment I'll treasure.  This is a breath I can exhale and know that I am okay.  I don't have to be anything, but the me, I am right now.

Living with sugar. or without.

We all know that I love sugar.  I do, I do, I do.  

I wish my husband shared my addiction.  

I wish I could eat one cupcake.  (not all the cupcakes)

I wish vanilla cream and chocolate did not have a voice.

I wish that snickers were health food.

I wish that donuts grew on trees.  I would be sure to eat only the organic ones. 

I wish that sugar didn't override my 'off' switch.

I wish that sugar could be banned, not sold at stores, not sitting in my pantry, not wafting through the air at the fair.

If only my wishes could be reality.

Unfortunately, I am one of millions of people who live fully addicted to sugar and sweets.

About a year ago I wrote a post, confessions of a sugar addict.  I have to admit I've been shocked at the amount of views that one post gets.  Since so many of us seem to struggle with this, I thought I'd share more about what I am doing to free myself of this addiction.

Last year, I tried ridding my diet of all sugars/sweets.  I managed to do so for about 2-3 weeks, but then fell into a bowl of ice cream and just had to take a bite.

After being off of sugar, reintroducing it to my diet, at first, is met with complete rejection.  I usually can't eat much and it makes me feel pretty sick.  Then, slowly it begins to build -  the need for more.  Until I'm once more groaning on the floor, pulling one more powdered sugar coated eclair into my mouth, barely finding the strength to chew.  Not even tasting it's delicious sweetness.

Have you seen Something About Mary?  No?  Well, I won't recommend it, but there's a sub story about a guy who was off of coke and his friend gets him to take a drink of a beer, telling him of course this won't restart your addiction.  Which it does, because we are all just a moment away from being coke heads - duh!  (Don't do drugs - you will be addicted to heroin if you smoke pot!  yes, I believe this.  It's kept me drug free.)  

Anyway, back to the coke guy - who is also one of my favorite actors - he eventually gets eaten by his python.  

And that, folks, is what sugar will do to you.  It's just one bite between you and python crushing death.

I'd rather live! and be beautiful while doing it.  There is nothing more toxic for my complexion than sweets.  Even knowing this and just imagining what it must be doing on a cellular level, it's been incredibly difficult to keep away from them.

As of today I have been off of refined sugar for 5 days.  Yay for me!!  However, unlike last year I am not doing a complete ban of all sweets.  I will happily indulge in any treat made with honey, grade B maple syrup, molasses, sucanot, rhapadura, or agave.   (I am careful with agave and maple syrup, because both of these tend to cause me to overeat - just not quite to the caramel dripping off my chin - eyes glazed over - state.)

I think we need treats.  They're like medicine to a long day or a special splurge for a job well done.  However, choosing to eat only the best sweets helps hold them in higher regard and keeps us from those very embarrassing moments, such as when you're husband comes downstairs at 2am only to find you in the middle of the kitchen, pie tin in hand with the whole carton of ice cream in the middle.  Oh, that hasn't happened to you?  

Here's to my quest for a healthy body, beautiful skin, organic energy, and invitations to more events - now that everyone knows I won't be writhing ecstatically in the middle of the dessert table.  It's always a little awkward when that happens.

And. . . yesterday at our small group get together - I didn't eat a brownie or lick the pan or sneak one when no one was looking or come home and have a giant bowl of ice cream or take a bite of the whipped cream and chocolate on my husband's frappaccino.  Can you believe my level of self control?!  I am amazing.   If only I knew I were invincible.  But I know I'm really just a sip away from that python's stomach. 

saying hello to change.

There's a shift happening.  A firm wind is blowing.  I can feel it swirling around me.  A shudder of anticipation mixed with fear shakes me.  Change.  It's staring me in the face and I cannot look away.  No matter how desperately I wish that I could.

I love change.  The way most of us do.  When it's happening to anyone else.  Unless, your shift effects my life, then let's be frank, not such a fan.

Even good change takes work.  Settling in, learning a new way.  Forming different habits.  I am a creature of habit.  Truly.  When I wake up, I want to stumble half blind to the kitchen where I brew a big cup of coffee and spend the next hour shooing my kids away.  This is not fully realistic.  In actuality I have to carry two growing children down the stairs, make them breakfast, get them settled, then have my coffee.  Which at this point I typically feel I deserve, and to enjoy it without having balls thrown at my head.

Have you ever been committed to something, to the point that even when it's causing you pain you'll continue?  There have been many harmful things in my life, that I've struggled to walk away from.  I have to say, the biggest for me swirls around food.  I LOVE junk food.  I can barely make it out of the grocery store without raiding the candy next to the checkout.  I'll fill up on ice cream then moan on the couch.  My poor husband often wonders why I continue when it makes me so sick.  I guess the truth is that it wasn't making me sick enough.  Until lately.

Suddenly, or maybe it's been getting worse the last few months, or years, my kidneys ache, my body can barely function, I'm crippled with exhaustion, my skin is broken out, and now if I even touch wheat my stomach cramps for hours.  sigh.

You know how people can be too educated?  This is one of those areas that I knew too much, but didn't want to change my diet.  I knew that how I ate was hurting me, but I just didn't care.  I could eat junk without gaining weight and while I frowned at my complexion I wasn't motivated by it.

My mom is a health food nut.  Though her education in food and vitamins and minerals stemmed from a need to heal herself, she raised us knowing how to protect and care for our bodies.   I hit 18, bought a couple spray cans of whipped cream, some coke, a few snickers and ate myself silly.  As, I have continued for the last 11 years.

Since having children, I am much more careful about eating junk food and prefer the closet approach to letting my kids in on my binge.  There've been some moments as an adult that my family has been g/f, s/f, and d/f, but after a few months of clean living and even feeling amazing I've found myself returning to my old habits.    Mainly because I haven't seen (or felt) the absolute value and necessity in it, until recently.  As I feel the pain from every bite so distinctly, I'm losing all desire to continue in my ways.

For a long time it was just about restriction.  How, I was never going to eat such and such foods again, usually after a late night ice cream feast.  This is more of a plan on what I will eat.  How I'm going to do things differently.  Carefully choosing how I'll nourish my body and the growing bodies around my table.

And so change blows itself through the door of my house and we square off in the kitchen.  I can feel the fear of failure, the sense that it's going to be harder than I realize.  I could just give up, but that option is no longer on the table.  I want to have complete health, I want to be the best version of myself, I want to live long, because this life is no longer about me.

I thought I'd share with all of you, as I will probably be posting more about this new adventure.  I'm scared.  But, I'm more desperate than I've ever been and that's exciting.

Welcoming change.  It's a deep breath.  A shift that has to happen.  A blank page of adventure.

Blessings.

My husband.

I took my children to the park yesterday.  We raced down slides, accosted every person with a dog, climbed too high on the monkey bars, and laughed in the brilliance of a carefree day.  As I pushed them higher and higher on the tire swing, singing happy birthday brilliantly off key, my husband came and slid his arm around me.  Soft and sweet, he pulled me into his arms and kissed me gently.  He'd been out of town for the past two days and finally caught up with us at the park.  I said hi, brushed him off, and refocused my attention on the kids.  Off and on through the night, he'd come close and I would push him away.  I knew I was being distant and I found myself frustrated with him, frustrated with myself and not really understanding why I had a wall built between us.

I could easily remember five years ago when we were living in Madison WI.  Running from the rain into old bookstores, reading on the same pier on which we would later promise forever.  Living, abandoned to our lives, joy, and passions, fully consumed with the other.  Our tiny apartment, where we would talk late into the night and wake too early to watch the people walking through the snow below, on their way to lives and jobs.  Fully catering to the other, eager to please, fascinated with the glee we found in our existence together.  

Fast forward to now, when dishes stack up, the weight of life, children, work, and constant giving out leave us empty and unable to stir up a wisp of desire for the other.  I went to bed last night, after pulling out of my funk.  Apologizing for my weirdness, we slept, our feet curled around each other and two children in between.  I felt heavy and sad.  It's easy to understand where the passion has gone, it's buried somewhere between familiarity and never enough time (alone).  It's easy to justify my pushing away when I feel constantly pressed upon to care for all the corners of our world and I've just finished doing it alone.  And it is easy to realize that if I allow this chasm between us to settle, uncrossed, unfilled, it will simply grow until the other side no longer becomes recognizable and we've buried ourselves in our separate islands of solitude.  Each caring for the family from their own retreat and the others sacrifice and effort becomes unrecognizable in the light of our own.

I could sigh and tell myself this is life.  It's what it's like with kids.  It's understandable, everyone goes through it.  Don't worry, don't press myself to change.  Eventually the kids will grow.  The season will shift and we'll find ourselves again.  But then, I have to think, that is when people look at their spouse and say 'who are you?  I don't know you anymore.'  And they turn and go their separate ways.
  

We are coming up on 5 years of marriage.  5 years, and for 4 1/2 of them we've been filled with the weight of pregnancy and kids.  We've moved 6 times and we have explored and journeyed through the far corners of this country.  We have crashed through waves.  Tag teamed in the middle of the night when colic and the flu kept us up through streaks of dawn.  We have chased through soaring redwoods.  Driven down endless stretches of winding highway.  We have climbed highest peaks.  We have shared each dream, each direction, each passion, each ambition.  We have lived fully, together.

I can say there is no one else I would rather spend my days.  There is no one else who causes my heart to drop when I see their face.  There is no one else who I love more completely, more desperately with all of my being.  And I never want there to be another.  This is it.  All of it.  This is my life and it is irrevocably connected to this man.  I would never change that. 

So, in this place I must shift.  I must transform.  I am challenging myself these 90 days to strengthen my health, to increase our finances, to promote awareness and I am going to add, to focus wholeheartedly on my marriage.  To not allow it to pass unnoticed, but to pour my affection, and attention into it.  To give of myself, without looking for repercussion.   To not allow the frustration of yesterdays, the why did you's or why nots or how comes, keep me from being free in the moment.  

Isn't that what new love is?  The dramatic fascination of another without the weight of broken promises, lack, or frustration hindering its rampant desire.  A blank slate.  The ability to love completely, without thought of the past.

Surprisingly enough I feel a curling of excitement.  Knowing that I am choosing to rewrite my thought process.  To do something new and not settle for the every day.  To live not out of reaction, but action.  

To each of you, may your days be filled with joy.

shoving forward.

Every now and then I indulge and have my cup of coffee with heavy whipping cream instead of half and half.  mmmmm.  There's something about the fat bubbles that gently spread to fill your cup with the rich lace of butter in the bite of a dark coffee.  It is goodness.  Though I suppose I should also admit that I've been frequenting the heavy cream a little more often lately.  Then today when I reached for my grande dark roast spiked with butter *ahem* cream, and the barista kind of smirked, like 'here ya go lady, enjoy your thighs with that'.  I was sad to find it didn't taste as wonderful as all of the previous times.  Not because of the snarky counter girl, but because I have become used to my sweet, indulgent, heavy cream and now it just tastes like regular half and half.  I am so annoyed.
Because I should be in bed I am now thinking of all the areas in my life that I began to indulge, to loosen the grip, to shirk responsibilities in the thought that it would just be this one time.  Until suddenly I wake to the realization that I have allowed the occasional to become the routine, and now the butter has lost its cream.
I could carry on, every now and then have the elusive sip that hooked me in the first place.  Or I could go back to square one and learn to appreciate the subtle nuances of the first sip of a black cup of coffee.  Ok, probably I'll just stick with half and half, or switch to tea.   Though now that I am awake, I cannot be asleep any longer and must root through the closets of my days and find the areas that need to be shifted, rearranged.  Complacency has snuck into more areas than I want to admit or openly want to change.  I like how life has flowed, I could choose to continue drifting in my whimsy down a winding stream.  And yet I cannot so easily swallow my laziness and must find ways to adjust.
Like an athlete who finds themselves stagnant in their speed and then push themselves, rejecting the desperation for rest, I too will push myself out of my imprint on the couch and get up to change the channels myself.  I will do this because I am embracing the change that is life.  The need inside myself to better, what I will only want to hide, if I continue.  

Then when routine has become a stronger, more diligent, faithful, clean at all times, type of women, then I will allow myself the small luxuries of rest.  And enjoy my coffee with heavy cream, until I can no longer enjoy the weight and will wallow back to my black cup of joe.